Week Nine: Easter Feast & Endless Roast Beast
Hello, friends and family! Crack open a cold seltzer and settle in for this week’s Dinner Diary.
Sunday 4/9/23
Roast pork shoulder with charred broccoli rabe, corn soufflé and Grandma Joyce’s fruit salad
Easter feast! I haven’t cooked a big meal for Easter in a while, but I was inspired by the menu that my aunts and uncles and cousins down South were preparing (featuring brisket, ham, fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs, and at least four kinds of casserole). To say I was jealous would be an understatement.
I don’t have much experience with cooking large cuts of meat beyond a few Thanksgiving turkeys, so I decided it was time to branch out to a proper roast beast. Initially, I’d planned to recreate the unbelievably soft pork shoulder stracotto we’d eaten at Corto a few weeks ago, but after some research and recipe browsing, I decided on this slow-roasted pork shoulder recipe from J. Kenji López-Alt, my go-to expert for all things meat.
I selected a skin-on, bone-in pork shoulder (because the best part of cooking meat is making stock with the bones) and used a modified version of the dry rub from this Bon Appetit recipe. I tried and failed to create that diamond cross-hatched pattern to make the skin crisp up; I didn’t have a sharp enough knife, and the X-acto blade I used wasn’t quite long enough to slice through. Mama said there’d be days like this.
I rubbed the salt mixture into the meat, wrapped it tightly in plastic, and let it chill overnight, then put it in the oven at 7 a.m. to roast at 250 degrees for about eight hours. The magic of roasting it low and slow is that the fat cap under the skin has time to melt and soak into the meat, so it’s basically self-basting. This roast turned out so good, succulent and juicy and somehow perfectly salted all the way through.
The roast was in good company with a handful of solid side dishes. The broccoli rabe, while not as soft as the broccoli rabe we had at Corto, was still fairly tasty. My sister Abbey brought these beautiful fluffy dinner rolls basted in an herb butter, full of fresh dill and chives and parsley from her garden. And I made this corn pudding casserole which honestly has no right to be this transcendent. We feasted.
For dessert, I made this “fruit salad”, a heritage recipe from my Grandma Joyce and a version of what’s commonly called ambrosia salad. We always ate this at her house in Pascagoula, Mississippi when we were kids. I’d assumed this was a relic of the wild 1950s where Jello and Cool Whip reigned over the American culinary landscape, resulting in cheerfully bizarre concoctions, but apparently ambrosia first emerged in the 1880s, when citrus fruit began to become more widely available to the average consumer. Fun facts! I made this batch the night before our feast so that the fruit and marshmallows could marinate in the sour cream and maraschino cherry juice.
Abbey and I exclaimed happily over the perfect texture of the marshmallows, recreated from our childhood (“Like, slimy and foamy? But somehow so good”) while Anne took small, polite bites and looked skeptical. All in all, a fantastic feast.
Monday 4/10/23
Easter feast leftovers
We just had leftovers from last night, with the added and welcome addition of some baby carrots and small potatoes that I covered with yesterday’s roast drippings and layered underneath the slices of pork as they reheated in the oven. Perfection.
Tuesday 4/11/23
Haluski with roast pork and cracklings
Still working my way through this enormous pork shoulder. This morning, I diced up all the fat trimmings I’d saved from the cooked roast and cooked them in the Dutch oven on low heat to render the fat (melt and clarify it to save for future cooking projects). After rendering and straining the fat, I ended up with a few ounces of lovely clear liquid lard, but I also ended up with an unexpected bonus: a bunch of tiny, crispy, salty bits of fried pork skin, aka cracklings. Damn. I was not expecting to love these, but I could not stop eating them.
In the process of learning how to make lard, I came across this fascinating NPR article, ”Who Killed Lard?”, which tells the story of how Procter & Gamble invented hydrogenation and Crisco and initiated a smear campaign against animal fats like lard, which had been the go-to cooking fat for centuries, in order to sell their new product. Fascinating stuff if you’re into food history and/or tales of corporate misinformation!
I’ve been wanting to make this traditional Eastern European dish called haluski that I recently learned about from a NYT Cooking newsletter, where it was described as “a simple and satisfying meal of buttery noodles and slivers of caramelized cabbage.” Sign me up! You know how I feel about caramelized cabbage. I sort of combined the NYT recipe with this one from A Family Feast, replacing the pancetta with chopped roast pork and some of those incredible cracklings.
The result was a wonderfully rich pasta dish. At the table, we took a few bites and wished for a little more salt and a touch of acid to cut the richness; Anne came up with the brilliant idea to add a little Parmesan, which solved both problems.
Wed 4/12/23
Farro bowls with tempeh and broccoli rabe
I promised Anne that tonight we could have a dinner with no roast pork in it, so I opted for this fresh and light grain bowl combination. I cooked the broccoli rabe in a different and much better way, following this Kitchn recipe which called for blanching and sautéing instead of roasting. This really helped with the bitterness and the toughness of the stems, making them a good deal softer and more palatable.
I made Mark Bittman’s crunchy crumbled tempeh from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, one of my go-to resources in the kitchen. (Anne used to say I should write a “Julie and Julia” style blog called “Hannah and Mark,” where I made every recipe in his book, but I didn’t think it was quite as catchy as the original). I topped the bowls with toasted walnuts and dried cherries, and dressed them with fresh lemon juice and a dab of sour cream. After three nights of roast pork, this was a refreshing change of pace.
Thursday 4/13/23
Pork fried rice
Back to pork! As you may have noticed, I make this fried rice a lot. It’s so solid! I usually swap in diced tofu for the ground pork, but this time I used diced pork left over from the endless roast beast. I can’t believe how much pork we ate this week. Time to embrace some spring veggies, I think.
Yes, the baby cried when the rice cooker powered on and played its 8-bit rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star,” even though I explained beforehand what was about to happen. I guess it’s always jarring to hear your special bedtime song while you’re enjoying a snack in your high chair.
This was the last of the pork shoulder! All that’s left now is the bone and some scraps, waiting in the freezer to achieve their dreams of greatness. I’m thinking red beans and rice? I better ask my parents to send me another bag of Camellia kidney beans.
Friday 4/14/23
Niçoise salad
Commence the embracing of spring veggies! I had never eaten a Niçoise salad before, but was inspired by the cover of this month’s edition of Savory by Stop & Shop, a charming little magazine published by my local grocery store chain.
Niçoise is French for “in the style of Nice” (the city), and I have just learned from the Wikipedia page for Salade Niçoise that this traditional salad has many vehement defenders who would be incensed by my addition of boiled potatoes and green beans, apparently considered a “massacre of the recipe” by purists. Good to know!
I like when a recipe calls for me to buy a grocery I’ve never bought before; today I bought a tin of anchovies and a bag of radishes. I didn’t know if I liked radishes, but it turns out I do, and I’m glad because I think they’re cute. I also thought the tin of anchovies was cute. As I prepped my mise en place, the evening light coming through the kitchen window made my humble ingredients look striking, and I took some pictures. I don’t think I would’ve noticed the loveliness of the light, except that I learned a lot from a useful food photography class online last week (from the food writer and culinary historian Sarah Lohman) and have been mentally framing pictures in the kitchen ever since.
I followed this NYT Cooking recipe, and composed a lovely platter of green beans, boiled potatoes, grape tomatoes, canned tuna, artichokes, boiled eggs, and kalamata olives. This composed salad was a fresh and filling dinner, and it was fun to compose first the platters and then each bite, pairing the ingredients a little differently each time. Radish, tomato, and tuna? Olive and egg? Infinite possibilities!
Approaching food in these increasingly creative ways is becoming an exercise in mindfulness, helping me feel grounded. It’s hard to be anywhere but in the moment when I’m making these low-stakes decisions: what to cook, how to cook it, how to photograph, how to describe. It reminds me of what I always loved about working in restaurants. Service work can be stressful, no doubt, and it was hell on my feet, and it’s true that I still wake up sweating from anxiety dreams about showing up late to a dinner shift at Manhatta with no clue what’s on the new menu, serving a dining room the size of a football field. But even during the most hectic dinner rush, and maybe especially then, I found myself entering that flow state where nothing existed but the task in front of me, my beating heart, and my capable hands.
I admit I have moments of self-doubt where I feel reluctant to work on this newsletter, wondering what the point is, why it matters, and why anyone would care what I made for dinner, when there are so many more pressing and urgent things in the world. But I’m reminded again and again, as I show up for this practice, that the point is this: taking the time to enjoy beautiful moments, to give myself permission to do things I really love, to follow my curiosity about food history and culture, and to build community by sharing the process with people in my life. So thank you for being here with me.
Saturday 4/15/23
Pizza at Razza
Oh man, I’ve been looking forward to this dinner for a long time! One of my Christmas presents from Anne was a gift card to Razza, an artisanal pizza restaurant in Jersey City. This spot was on my radar long before we moved across the river, ever since New York Times food critic Pete Wells caused a citywide uproar by claiming that the best pizza in New York is in New Jersey. (Tangent: I waited on Mr. Wells during my stint as a server at Manhatta, and though he gave the restaurant a disappointing one star review, he noted that the servers were “like trained mind readers,” and “wholesome and cheerful, with occasional flashes of intuition.” Those binoculars that suddenly materialized on his table? I put them there because I saw him looking out the window. That was me! I’m famous!)
I have to say I agree with his assessment of the pizza at Razza—these were top-tier pies. They reminded me so much of the wood-fired pizzas at Co., a now-defunct restaurant in Chelsea where I waited tables for nearly two happy years before it shuttered unexpectedly in 2018, breaking my heart. I loved that little place, and my co-workers were like family. I woke up one morning to an email that basically said, “Don’t bother coming in for your shift tonight; we’re closed permanently, effective immediately.” When I tell you that this restaurant closure broke my heart, I mean it broke my heart. I couldn’t eat pizza for months afterwards. Months! Do you know how broken your heart has to be to avoid pizza for months in New York City?
But they say that time heals all wounds, and five years later, I’ve been back in the pizza-eating swing for a while now. Thank goodness, because these were incredible: high-quality toppings, super-thin crust with a good chew, and a perfect amount of char from the wood oven.
My dearest Brooklynites and Long Islanders, my Southern friends and my West Coast crew: if you’ve been on the fence about visiting me in New Jersey, just remember that the best pizza in New York City is in Jersey City, and if you don’t come visit me, I can’t take you to eat it.
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Thanks for reading! I’m going to keep plugging my City Harvest birthday fundraiser in hopes of raising $300 for this cool organization by May 7th, because everyone deserves access to good food. We’re 10% of the way there! So please consider clicking this link to my fundraiser page and dropping a few dollars in the bucket.
And if you need to laugh today, check out these terrible recipes generated by an AI neural network. Keep an eye out for a future issue of Dinner Diary featuring Beothurtreed Tuna Pie.
See you next week!